Strong disease risk from a common mtDNA variant

13 May 2005

A recent study by Petros and colleagues announced at the meetings of the American Association for Cancer Research (hat tip: Dienekes) shows that haplogroup U, which is possessed by around 9.6 percent of Americans, is associated with an increased rate of renal and prostate cancer.

"We found that 16.7 percent of the prostate cancer patients and 20.7 percent of renal cancer patients are from the U haplogroup," Petros noted. "If you are a Caucasian American and are of haplogroup U, you have roughly twofold increased risk over other Caucasian American haplogroups.

Is this at last a reason to sign up for the Genographic Project? I guess not for me, since they are only doing the mtDNA haplogroup assessment for female samples!

John Hawks is the Vilas-Borghesi Distinguished Achievement Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. I work on the fossil and genetic record of human evolution (About me).

Support the site! When you buy products from Amazon using my link, the site gets 6% of your purchase, at no cost to you. These funds allow me to defray the hosting expenses and keep the site free of advertising.